


The Fire in His Shadow

by TSValing



Series: Light and Dark - Two Halves of a Whole [2]
Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Aloy POV introspective piece, Canon Compliant, F/M, Not really romance but the seeds are there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 19:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19301986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TSValing/pseuds/TSValing
Summary: Aloy struggles with her thoughts and feelings during a brief moment of rest. Doubt, concern, anger, and disappointment all make her wonder if she made the right choice by rejecting Nil's request.





	The Fire in His Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> I felt a need to write Aloy's thoughts from The Darkness in Her Flame to pair with Nil's POV. It's much shorter, but Aloy had a lot more going on to keep her mind off of him, and she is a very decisive woman, so there was less for her to think about.

“Take a seat at the fire. We’ll talk at nightfall,” Sylens said once she pulled herself over the edge of the climbing path.

“Great,” she muttered as she went to collapse on a log. “At least I’ll have a fire to keep me company.”

She didn’t think Sylens would be good company, anyway. She knew next to nothing about him, but she figured out enough in the short time since he first spoke to her to know that he wasn’t someone she’d want to share a fire and chat with. But she could use some company, someone to take her mind off the nervous, restless flutter in her bones that wouldn’t go away. It was a feeling she never enjoyed, but she could usually associate it with boredom, a visceral need to continue her hunt. It vanished when she could take down a machine, especially a challenging one, or when she tripped over some ruins to explore, quenching her curiosity and need for answers to all the questions she kept at the back of her mind since childhood.

She wanted to think this anxious feeling was because of the task ahead of her. She didn’t know what she would be facing that night, but that uncertainty wasn’t what plagued her mind. It was only mid-morning, but she doubted it would cross her mind to worry about the mission ahead until it grew dark. She probably should be worried over the potential risks this mission could have. She should be gnawing her lip as she considered what might be waiting for her besides a modified tallneck. She should be worried about a trap, or how many cultists might be guarding the tallneck, or if there would be more corrupted machines.

Or worse, the corrupters and deathbringers they dug up to serve their army.

But, no, her thoughts stubbornly tried to swing back to the damn duel she refused and the nagging worry for a… _friend?_ Was he a friend? She really didn’t know what category to put him in. That usually didn’t bother her, but after his request and the _feelings_ the whole conversation left her with, a part of her needed to understand what he had become to her over the handful of encounters they had.

“Stupid Nil,” she muttered as she picked up a stick to poke at the logs in the fire pit – they were damp from a rain shower that passed through earlier in the morning, but she might be able to start a smoldering fire. It was warm enough without it, but the bright flames might distract her. And she could start making a meal to eat before it was time to strike the tallneck.

She really just wanted the distraction.

“I should have expected it,” she murmured to herself as she pulled out her flint and searched for some dry kindling around the ledge, anything to get a good flame started. “I knew something was bothering him… knew that he was planning something when he asked me to meet him…” She trailed off to growl as she struck her flint in a vain effort to light a flame, but the stupid kindling refused to catch fire at her desperate sparks. She tried to imagine it was Nil’s head she was striking. It did nothing but make her feel more frustrated. “Maybe I should have accepted…”

Her chest tightened, her stomach rolled, and the feelings that spurred her to reject his request clawed at her conscience.

She gave up on the fire with a sigh. She would try again later, once she had calmed down. A drop of blaze would be enough to get a good fire going, but if she lit it while anger simmered in her mind, she was liable to set the whole forest on fire.

“I don’t want to kill him, but…”

Nil was lost. She could see it when she found him waiting outside the last bandit camp she cleared alone. She could see it in the disappointed slump of his shoulders when she refused to fight him. He was a former soldier who loved to kill, but he was trying to direct those impulses toward people who harmed everyone, people who preyed on the weak, people who indiscriminately killed, or captured innocent civilians to sell into slavery. He took their lives for his own self-interest, but it helped others, the results were good even if the intentions were… _muddled_.

He refused to help her with the Eclipse because it was _political_ \- at least to him. She didn’t understand why he would see them differently when they did nothing but spread misery and suffering to people who did nothing to deserve it. Maybe it was because he was Carja. He was trying to stay on the right side of the law. How many Carja had she met now that asked favors of her because she wouldn’t cause tension because she wasn’t Carja, because she wouldn’t break the ceasefire if she went into the exiles’ territory? Was he trying to stay out of that situation because it would cause problems for Avad and the Sundom? It made sense, even if it annoyed her that she couldn’t count on him to help with anything other than bandits.

But without any bandit clans for him to hunt, what would he do now? She could almost imagine how uncomfortable that feeling must be for him. He had focused his whole mind, his whole purpose on hunting them. How would she feel when she had her answers and got her vengeance against the man who killed Rost? Where would she go? Could she go back to the Sacred Lands? Settle down there? Patrol the lands with Varl and the other braves?

The thought unsettled her. As much as she liked Varl, she would never be a true Nora, she would never truly belong to the tribe. Even if most of the tribe welcomed her back with open arms, there would always be those whispering – if not outright cursing – about the motherless girl.

So, then what? Settle in the Sundom? She would have more freedom, but Avad and Erend might expect her to stick around Meridian more often, and that idea left her as unsettled as returning to Nora-land. There was still so much of the world she wanted to see. She could always come back to the Sundom to visit her friends, but she didn’t think she was ready to settle there.

Or anywhere.

Was that how Nil felt? He obviously didn’t belong among the Carja. He wandered the wilds just as she did, and his disturbing impulses could make him a danger to the people around him if he had nothing else to slake those desires on.

_‘He wasn’t a knife without a thought – not like those butchers in the Sun-Ring. He had honor…’_

Janeva had assured her that Nil wasn’t as dangerously disturbed as she once thought, and he had never done anything to make her doubt his honor. He valued rules, was generally honest about what he could become without those restraints. He didn’t seem to want to be that person again, but without the restrictions he placed on himself, could he end up back there?

He had seemed to be getting better, seemed more human. He empathized with her, showed more emotions. He was friendly with her. She had thought maybe there was hope, maybe he was changing, maybe he was letting go of the twisted soldier he once was and settling into a new purpose, a new possibility for the future. But maybe she was wrong.

“Stubborn chuff,” she whispered as anger fizzled into a sinking disappointment. “Don’t prove me wrong… don’t make me have to kill you…”

A sigh rang in her ear. “Are you going to mutter like this all day?” Sylens asked, snapping her from her thoughts to hiss at the interruption.

“I thought you were living up to your name and remaining silent until later?”

“I wasn’t planning to interject, but you keep talking to yourself about something trivial.”

“Trivial?”

“What else would that man’s request be but a trivial distraction? You were right to refuse him. While I am sure you could have won the battle, there was still a risk you could lose and then all the answers to these riddles we’ve uncovered would be out of reach. Utterly worthless.”

“I’m so touched by your concern for my life,” she said with sarcasm dripping from every word as she rolled her eyes.

“If you are going to risk your life for something, then the rewards for success need to be great enough to justify the risk. What would you have gained from fighting him? You would be putting a dangerous man down, but he’s on a path that will inevitably lead to his own death, anyway. Why bother risking your life when someone else can put him out of his misery?”

“You’re talking about him as if he were an… _animal_ ,” she hissed. “And he isn’t a murderer…”

_‘… not like those butchers…’_

“Maybe he’s not right now, but I’ve heard your conversations with him. It’s only a matter of time before he kills someone innocent. He had no qualms killing innocents as a soldier, after all.”

An uncomfortable shiver clawed down her spine and she fought the urge to hug herself as her doubts returned. She shook them away before they could get to her.

“No… no. He went to prison. He accepted punishment for what he did. He…” Did he regret what he did as a soldier? He said they were acceptable things given the circumstances, but he also said that all wars were crimes and there was shame in his tone when he spoke of the man he could be if the rules that controlled him went away, or became as dark and depraved as they had during the Red Raids. When the commanders he followed gave orders to kill innocents, to kill children or elderly, people who couldn’t fight back, she knew he likely followed them without question, even if he knew it was wrong.

“What does it matter? He’s not your problem. You have far bigger things to concern yourself with than the struggles of a killer…” He trailed off with a thoughtful hum, and then sighed. “It is too bad he rejected your suggestion of hunting the Eclipse. You wouldn’t have to risk your life as often if you had someone expendable to deal with the foot soldiers.”

“Expendable?” she shouted, standing up from her log to pace the small area as her temper sparked at Sylens’s flippant disregard for someone’s life. “You’re judging him because he kills people, but you’re hardly any better with how little you value life.”

“I value life when it serves a purpose… has a use.”

She scoffed. “Yes, and I’m sure you have a very strict definition of what life is useful depending on if they’re useful to _you_.”

“Well… of course. That is how the world works. People value those that can provide something for them. All the people you have _befriended_ only cared about you because you proved yourself useful to them in one way or another. And now that they are indebted to you, you keep them around in case they can provide a use for you in the future.”

“That’s not…” She snapped her mouth shut as a crippling doubt stung her heart. She might not value her friends - the people she had met since the Proving - because of what they could do for her, but did they only see her as someone they could use? The Nora had shunned her from birth out of fear, but the moment they realized they needed her for one reason or another, they began to embrace her.

No, that wasn’t it. Vala accepted her before she had proved herself as anything but competition. She would have been her friend if…

She blinked away the burn in her eyes as the memories of that day threatened to drag her into a murky, dark place she refused to let consume her.

She knew that not everyone valued life the way she did, but she also knew that not everyone regarded life as some expendable commodity. She understood that people needed one another, and not always for something as tangible as favors and goods. People need each other to grow, to be better, to have a connection to something outside themselves. Every life has the potential to hold value to someone, for reasons not everyone might see.

“Do you think that soldier cares about your life? Or any other? If you had given him the opportunity, he would have killed you without remorse. Your life is expendable to him. If he didn’t believe that, he wouldn’t have made that request. And now that you refused him, now that there are no bandits for you to hunt together, you have no more use to him,” Sylens continued. “You are wasting your time thinking about him. I doubt he’s as plagued by thoughts of you as you are of him, so why bother?”

“You just don’t understand,” she huffed, falling onto her log again as she gave up arguing with him. It was only making her feel worse.

He didn’t respond, so it seemed he had given up on the conversation, too. In a way, he was right. It was useless thinking about her decision. It was a distraction from what really mattered to her – finding out where she came from and why a cult wanted her dead.

She forced away her doubts, grabbed hold of the feeling that made her refuse him in the first place. His life had purpose beyond what he made of it. There was still a need for him in the world. He was learning. He was changing. He just needed a chance to find his place.

_‘He wasn’t a knife without a thought…’_

He could have gone west with the Shadow Carja. He could have joined an army that allowed him to kill, allowed him to be a soldier. But he didn’t.

He could have been like Zaid. He could have lied about the things he had done as a soldier. He could have gotten out of trouble and found a way to continue killing anyone he pleased. But he didn’t.

Nil surrendered himself to Avad for judgement before anyone could decide if he committed a war crime or not. He confessed without an investigation. He understood that what he had done - what all the Carja soldiers had done - was a crime, because he understood that all wars were a crime to someone. He willingly went to prison to atone for everything he did. Even if the lives he took were acceptable given the circumstances, he acknowledged that the war was wrong, that the victims would believe his actions to be criminal.

There was good in him. Somewhere. He wasn’t like Helis. He wasn’t like Zaid. He was honest, even if he was brutal and twisted. He had honor. He had something inside him that made his life worth living.

And made him worth a measure of hope that maybe someday he would see what she saw, that he would find a place where he belonged.

* * *

 

She hadn’t known who to expect to find when she went down to the western gate. Marad only called them _irregulars_.

She was touched that so many had come to fight for her. She had been struggling to feel some sense of hope for the battle ahead, especially after informing Avad and his council of everything she knew about the army Helis would bring. Every meeting they held to prepare for this only reminded her of how difficult it would be to win, and how much was at stake if they lost. But seeing so many people come from all corners of the world – or the world she had seen – made her want to fight harder, to cling to hope.

While most of the people on the ridge had surprised her with their presence, there was one she hadn’t expected to see at all. Not after how they last parted.

“Isn’t that… _him_. From the battle at the Daunt.”

Aloy froze at the guard’s whisper. She had just jumped off the battlement Nakoa and Janeva were stationed at and intended to visit Petra on the other side of the road, but the nervous voice and gossip stilled her.

She couldn’t help her curiosity. She wondered who this mysterious person was that invoked such anxiety in a guard.

“Can’t be,” the other guard scoffed as she began to move around them to get a look at the man standing by the river. “Cinnabar Sands was before that, and there were no survivors.”

Her breath caught in her throat when she saw who stood there. Was she seeing things? Maybe it was another mercenary. She had seen plenty of Carja outlanders wearing similar armor, but that stance… that bow… the red scarf fluttering in the breeze that swept through the valley…

And then she heard his voice call back, “Well, I don’t like to boast,” and took off for the bank of the river.

When he turned around at her approach, she didn’t know what to say, where to begin. Shock, disbelief, an overwhelming sense of… _happiness._ He was there. He was really there. And yet she still couldn’t quite grasp that he had come to fight against an enemy he didn’t want to face, against machines he didn’t like to kill.

“…Nil?” she breathed out, still at a loss for words, still too stunned to grasp that it was really him.

The subtle smile he wore, the spark of excitement brightening his silver eyes, the way his whole stance relaxed at only his name – they all said far more than he could ever say aloud.

And the way he said her name, the smooth satisfaction woven into that single word, as though he was savoring the chance to say it, to know it, to know her. Just hearing him say _“Aloy”_ for the first time made something pleasant flutter inside her as she tried to pick out all the emotions she felt.

He looked well. He looked as happy as she felt.

She was glad to see him, because maybe, just maybe she had been right. Maybe there was still good inside him.

Maybe there was something to hope for.


End file.
